


Redefining Beauty

by Cumberbatch Critter (ivelostmyspectacles)



Category: Free!
Genre: Acceptance, Coming Out, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Rei has a lot of self doubt and needs some swim club love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4138017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelostmyspectacles/pseuds/Cumberbatch%20Critter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That couldn't be... the person that Rei-san's seeing?!</p><p> </p><p>[If Rei really had been seeing a guy. Alternate "Farewell to Butterfly" scene.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redefining Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> For all of this anime (this lovely lovely anime unf) being a fanservice anime, this got into my head like, what if it was for real, and I had to write it. My 200th story on AO3 is a serious Free! story. ... Could be worse!
> 
> I do not own _Free! Iwatobi Swim Club/Free! Eternal Summer_.

Rei curled his fingers into his palms, pressing his knuckles against his knees. If there were anywhere else that he could have been, he would have been there and not here. He had known from the very start that the swim club was full of stubborn people, and only had learned it more so since he had joined, but wasn't this taking it a bit too far?

"Rei-chan, please tell us what's bothering you!"

He raised his fingers, pressing them against the worn frame of his glasses as they slipped down his nose. "There's nothing bothering me," he repeated, and looked off to the side as he said it.

"Why won't you tell us?" Nagisa demanded. Rei could feel the blonde's eyes boring holes on him from the other side of Haruka's table. "We're your friends, Rei-chan, we want to know what's bothering you!"

"There's nothing bothering me," Rei replied, for the third time since being corralled into the living room. He pushed himself to his feet. "And if there's nothing else, I really have somewhere else I need..." He didn't, but that didn't matter.

"No! Rei-chan! Don't go!" His legs met with resistance; arms wrapped around them as Nagisa scrambled over and threw himself at his feet. "Don't quit the swim club!"

Rei paused, blinked in surprise at the sudden exclamation. "Wha...?" Don't quit the swim club? They thought that he was going to quit the swim club? "I'm-"

"We saw you talking to the captain of the track team!" Nagisa interrupted. "You're thinking about going back to the track team and we don't want you to leave us! Please, Rei-chan, don't quit!"

It was juvenile, really, the sudden urge that he got to throw his head back and laugh. Again, again. Nagisa, Makoto, Haru, Gou. Even Rin, they were all the most illogical of joys in his life. And somehow, they always seemed to arrive at the same most illogical conclusions regarding things that they knew nothing about.

"Nagisa-kun. I'm not going to quit swim club." He looked down at Nagisa. "It's true that I was talking to the track team captain, but quitting swim club is the last thing on my list of things to do."

Nagisa looked up at him, bright eyes gleaming with harried emotion. "What? You're not?"

Rei shook his head left, and then right. "No."

Nagisa looked up at him for a moment, mouth agape and thoughts racing across his face, and then: "Then why have you been acting the way that you have been? Why have you been so distant? We thought that you were quitting because we saw you with the track team captain, but if you're not quitting, what's been bothering you?? Is it something we did? Is it something that I did?"

"What? No! Nagisa-kun-"

"I'm not letting go of you until you tell us what's wrong!" Nagisa announced, and tightened his grip around Rei's legs.

"Nagisa-kun..." Rei looked away from the blonde and across the room at Makoto and Haru, hoping that he'd find some assistance from them. But they were also the reason that he had been dragged here, and they looked back at him with the same determined look in their eyes like Nagisa.

"We're worried about you," Makoto said shortly. "You haven't missed practice, but you haven't been your usual self. Nagisa and Haru and I decided to have this intervention to try and help you. We're all here for you."

Laughing no longer seemed the best solution. He wished that it were that simple, to laugh off his friends when they were so dedicated to _him_. But he wouldn't do that, anyway. That his friends really were that dedicated... That they cared that much for him...

No, laughing was no longer the most logical solution. He didn't feel like it anymore.

"Rei." Rei looked over at Haru as he spoke. "Be free."

Free. As it if were that simple. Rei wished it were that simple. He looked away, staring towards the closed door. "I... can't."

"Why not?" Nagisa retorted, clutching even tighter. "It's got to be something that you can tell us! You won't go back to your normal self if you keep everything bottled up inside! Don't you trust us, Rei-chan?!"

"That's not it!" Rei pulled free of Nagisa's grip, clearing the distance between them with a few steps.

"Rei-chan..."

Rei clenched his hands into fists. "Can't you just stay out of it...?" he muttered, not looking back at them.

"No! No, we can't! There's something going on and if you can't handle it yourself, then we're going to help you!"

"You can't help me!"

"Why not?!? I want to help you, Rei-chan, we all do!"

"It's not that simple!" He huffed for breath, fingernails biting into his palms.

"Rei..."

"Why isn't it?" Nagisa asked shortly. He wasn't yelling anymore, either. "You don't have to keep secrets from us, Rei-chan."

Rei let out a breath that he wasn't aware that he'd been holding. He was tired of fighting. He was tired of hiding. He was just... tired. His shoulders slumped and he turned his head into his shoulder, unconsciously curling into the safety of his own skin. "... I'm gay."

Silence fell. It was only a matter of time before they broke into a chorus of _what?!_ s and _no!_ s. Rei wanted to be out of the house and far, far away before that happened. But he felt stuck in place. He couldn't move, and his heartbeat pounded in his ears.

Nagisa was the first one to break the silence. "... _That's_ what's been going on? You have a boyfriend?"

Rei unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Licked his lips nervously. "Yes. Er, no. I don't think..." He took a deep breath. "I don't think it's gonna work out."

"Who wouldn't want to date you?" Nagisa retorted.

Rei blinked again, looking back at his friends so fast that his neck nearly hurt from the motion. Nagisa's face was intense, with the slightest hint of a pout in the way that his bottom lip pushed out further than the top. Rei looked at him for another moment. "What...?"

"Who wouldn't want to date you? You're smart and a good friend and really good swimmer!" The pout became more pronounced. "Whoever doesn't want to date you is stupid!"

Rei blinked; it was the only thing he could muster up the strength to do. He felt like his mouth might be hanging open. "You mean..." He cleared his throat, and turned around slightly. "You don't... care?"

"Why would we care?" Nagisa sat back, splaying his hands out on the floor behind him. "We just wanted to know what was going on!"

Rei tore his gaze away from Nagisa, looking to his senpai sitting at the table.

"You could have told us sooner," Makoto said. "Although I'm sorry we were so brusque about it." He ran his fingers through his hair. "We thought... well, you heard what we thought."

Rei looked at Haru. "Haruka-senpai...?"

Haru shrugged. "It doesn't matter to me. As long as you love the water," he added seriously.

"But..." Rei's mind was scrabbling to keep up. Surely this was a farce. Maybe it was a dream. They couldn't be so... _this way_. "But two men in love isn't beautiful!"

"Any two people in love is beautiful," Haru replied.

Was it... that simple? Could it be that... for all of his calculations... all his misgivings... maybe...

His vision swam. Rei slammed his eyes closed, blinking away the tears, pushing his glasses out of the way to scrub the back of his hand against his eyes. "Haruka-senpai... thank you." He breathed in deeply and pressed his glasses back into place again. "All of you..." He looked at Makoto and Nagisa. "... Thank you."

"You don't have to keep secrets from us, Rei-chan!" Nagisa threw his arms around his waist.

"Ah-"

"We're your friends! We love you the way you are!"

Rei could only stare for another beat. And then he smiled, reaching to bury his fingers into Nagisa's locks and ruffle his hair. "Thanks, Nagisa-kun."

Nagisa laughed and ducked out of the way. "You gotta tell us who you were seeing. It's not the track captain, is it?"

"Huh? Uh." He felt his cheeks go warm. "No, it wasn't." He wasn't used to talking about these things with people.

"Well, make sure you tell us so we can teach them a lesson!"

"What?" Rei looked over in time to see Haru make a fist and press it into his opposite hand, cracking his knuckles loudly. " _What?_ " he repeated. It all felt so surreal.

Joining swim club. It seemed like ages ago that he had been so against the idea. But now swim club... these people, they were the best people that he could have asked for. They had accepted him into their swim club, and had accepted him into their lives. And they still continued to. It was a feeling that Rei was unaccustomed to.

It was a good feeling.

 

**Author's Note:**

> ~~I don't know why I had to pick on Rei-kun but I swear all the manly tears in this show really get me their bromance is through the roof~~


End file.
